A mysterious letter was anonymously faxed to our headquarters by a self-described “disgusted” Verizon customer service rep angry at how he/she says Verizon is screwing over landline customers. Here’s the highlights of his gut-spilling:

30,000+ people nationwide have still not received the free HDTVs Verizon promised new FiOS triple-play subscribers

Verizon totally screwed up the “blitz” promotion, leading some customers signing up and not getting their discounts, others getting too much discount, and others not getting their discount for months

Employees issued over $1 million in credit in January ’08, double what was given out in Jan ’07

$250 in discretionary credit has been reduced to $50

Internally, Verizon refers to customer service reps who give out “too much” credit due are called “offenders.”

If his allegations are true, they could prove fodder for the NJ AG’s office.

Full letter scan, inside…

Confessions of a Verizon Consultant

I work for Verizon in customer service and I think it’s time your readers knew the truth about just how screwed up Verizon’s marketing and billing is. Your readers are probably familiar with the tv promotion, but that is only the latest failed marketing attempt. In fact it is one in a series of clusterfucks, caused either by our marketing department, our accounting department or both. I should first emphasize that I work in NJ, so what I’ve witnessed isn’t necessarily representative of what goes on in other states, but I suspect it probably is.

Our primary offer at Verizon is packages or bundles of services: phone, internet and cable. In areas where FIOS is available, we offer that; where it isn’t we offer Directv. The phone component is our freedom essentials which offers 3 services with unlimited long distance. Beginning in the fall of 2006 Verizon began aggressively promoting our packages with offer after offer in quick succession. Almost all of them have been disastrous. Among the mistakes made by our marketing department:

* advertising promotions before they were allowed to
* sending offers meant only for new customers to existing ones
* listing the end of promotion dates incorrectly
* failing to give the employees accurate information on the promotions

About 18 months ago we started offering what we call the blitz. It is a discount off of the freedom essentials price, and it was only meant to be offered to new customers. What’s important to know is that it is incompatible with any other bundle offer or any other promotion. Unfortunately inadequate training and lack of ethics by some employees led to it’s being offered to all customers, and being combined with other discounts. The amount of the discount was initially $15, then increased to $19 and then to $20. When we raised our rates on the plan by $it meant we had to increase the discount by $2 as well. With the change in the amount of the discount, and the change in the rate itself, it isn’t surprising that accounting started fouling up. Some of their failures include:

* Some customers never got their $2 increase in discount.
* Others got too much and received a $4 increase in the discount
* Some customers get a double discount even though were eligible for a triple discount.
* Some customers don’t see their blitz discount for 2, 3 even 4 months, despite multiple employees submitting a request.
* As a result of multiple requests by employees for the discount, some customers actually got the discount multiple times. In some cases customers got free service as a result.
* Some customers got the discount even if they canceled the plan, again resulting in some customers having zero bills. The same thing happened on accounts on winter suspension.

What happens if you are promised a price, and then your bill doesn’t reflect that price? Shouldn’t you get credit that month? Not according to Verizon. Employees were told to refuse to credit these charges because the discount, once applied, would last for 12 months. You would get your discount in months 2-13 rather then 1-12. Or 3-14 or 4-15, whenever we finally got it right. So your discount was deffered because of our inability to properly process the discount. Service reps who did credit customers in the 1st or 2nd month were called “offenders” in one email inadvertently sent to everyone.

Then there’s the tv debacle. In October 2007 we offered a free 19 inch HDTV to anyone who signed up for a triple bundle. Customers were told they would get their tv within 4 weeks. Then we found out they get a confirmation letter in 4 weeks, and once they responded to it, then they get the tv 4 weeks from then. Except not everyone got their letter. Some customers got letters for the double bundle (which gave them a camcorder) when they were actually eligible for the tv.

Weeks stretched into months and by February we had many irate customers. Some went to ABC news and in their February 1 news report, a Verizon PR person was quoted as saying that there were only a “handful of complaints.” A handful? 30,000 is not a handful. That’s right, as if this moment there are 30,000 tv’s nationwide that haven’t been delivered and that’s just the FIOS customers. Who knows how many non-FIOS customers are still waiting their tv’s. Let’s put that number in perspective. We added 250K FIOS video subscribers in the 4th quarter and an unknown amount in the the first 2 months of 2008, perhaps another 150K. If 30K still don’t have their tv that means that roughly 10% of those eligible don’t have their tv’s. And remember that’s just the FIOS customers.

Even those figures don’t tell the full picture because that doesn’t take into account the thousands of customers who think they’re eligible for the tv but aren’t. As I said at the start, the blitz offer and the triple bundles are incompatible. If you signed up for the triple bundle, you were eligible for the free tv. If you got the blitz or a combination of the triple bundle and the blitz, then you weren’t eligible for the tv. Who knows how many people were verbally told they were eligible, only to receive the blitz price, rendering them ineligible? The only way for that to be resolved is for them to know that there’s a price problem and to bring that to an employee’s attention. When someone says they didn’t get their tv, we just pass them to our fulfillment center, which will then tell them they’re not eligible and no amount of complaining to them will help them. In the past few weeks we were told to look carefully for eligibility before referring a customer to the fulfillment center, but that’s unlikely to happen. Management is all over our ass about sales, and opening that can of worms is not something many of us want to do.

At the same time that ABC news was being told it was a handful, customers who were waiting got letters saying if they wanted the original tv from the offer it may be another 8-12 weeks. Alternately they could take a Magnavox 19 inch HDTV and get it 4-8 weeks. Or they could take the $200 best buy gift card that was originally offered as an alternative to the tv.

Compounding the problem is that in FIOS there are no HD set top boxes available. Even if you got your HDTV, you won’t be getting a HD picture any time soon.

As bad as the tv debacle is, it gets worse. In February 2008 we sent thousands of mailers out to customers offering them the blitz price on freedom essentials. or on a bundle package. Three weeks later Verizon decided we weren’t going to honor the blitz price. So, you got ot a mailer that said you could have the blitz? Sorry, too bad. You were signed up 3 months ago and are still waiting for your blitz? Sorry, too bad. They’re removed all ability to issue blitz discounts from our computers. Management has told us to soothe the customer, but tell them they can not have the blitz. If I made up prices I’d get fired, but apparently Verizon can announce one price, then decide not to honor it and that’s perfectly fine.

Meanwhile, employees have issued twice as much credit as we did a year ago. According to Andrea Custis we gave out over 1M in credit in January 08, double the amount from January 07. Why might we have to give so much credit? Could it be that our billing systems are for shit? Or that our price quotes are completely off the mark because there’s so many promotions and they’re changing them every day that so we don’t know what we’re talking about? Or that people are out of service longer because we have so many techs dedicated to installing FIOS?

At a time when we are screwing up like never before, Verizon has decided: no more credit. That’s right: we screw up, but you still have to pay. Service reps used to have the discretion to issue up to $250 of credit without needing to ask permission. Then they started cracking down on the “offenders” and two weeks ago reduced our credit limit to $150 and last week to $50. Today we got an email from our director Erica Kelly saying that “our adjustments are tied to our revenue” so no more credit is to be issued by anyone (including management) for any reason till after March 30th. So, we could charge you incorrectly and we won’t adjust it and why? Cause finances are a bit tight this month. What a crock of shit! If a customer tried telling us that we’d shut their phone off!What unmitigated gaul they have, at a time when every thing we do is a disaster, every promotion is a failure, every promise is broken, to tell customers “tough shit if we made a mistake. Pay up anyway.” Who do these executives think they are? And the worst part is WE (the frontline employees) have the pleasure of sounding like Ebeneezer Scrooge when we tell customers that yes we made XYZ msitake but no, we’re not going to remove the incorrect charge from your bill.Send

Are these problems company wide? I can’t say with certainty but judging by the responses to the tv threads here on the Consumerist I’d say it probably is..It’s time Verizon stop treating customers like crap. It’s time Verizon stopped expecting it’s customer service agents to be the zookeeper who has to cleans up their steaming piles. It’s time Verizon stoped lying to everyone, and stopped pretending that problems don’t exists. It’s time for Verizon to fix their broken systems, fix their lousy billing, train us properly, and only offer promotions they can actually make good on. It’s time Verizon took action against the employees who purposely make up prices and say anything to get a sale.

We’ve told management about these issues and no one is listening. Maybe they will finally listen if you tell them you’re not going to take it . Here’s a few emails you may want to try. The penny pinching director for the state of NJ is Erica Kelly. Her email is erica.j.kelly@verizon.com. The head of NJ’s Marketing department, the one that likes to offer you one price but and then tell you you can’t have it is Andreas Custis. Her email is andrea.l.custis@verizon.com. If you want to go right to the top, contact Ivan Seidenberg, our CEO. His email is ivan.g.seidenberg@verizon.com.

If you would rather bypass the bureaucrats, then you can contact Anne Milgram the NJ Attorney General, or the BPU. Their numbers are in the blue government pages of your phone book. As for you Verizon sufferers outside NJ I would direct you to contact Ivan Seidenberg. He’s the CEO for the whole company, not just NJ. Or you can go over their heads and contact your state attorney general or your board of Public Utilities.

Yours Truly

A Disgusted Verizon Consultant

In response to this post, John Bonomo, Verizon’s director of Media Relations, writes:

The employee who anonymously faxed the “mysterious” letter to your headquarters is doing his or her colleagues a disservice and dishonoring the work that they do on behalf of our customers. It’s more appropriate to cheer for thousands of our customer service representatives who are helping our customers every day.

Even worse, this self-described employee’s letter contains a number of inaccuracies, and readers here should be aware them. For example, we’ve stated publicly that customers who qualified for the free TV under our recent promotion will receive one. We also acknowledged that delivering the set would take some time, and we said that as a part of the promotion.

We’ve also said that we have begun taking new orders from new customers for HD set-top boxes, and we are fulfilling back orders that we placed for some customers who had service installed during our temporary shortage. We have a strong commitment to serving our customers and for making things right when an issue is called to our attention.

Of course, any customer who isn’t getting the service they deserve should contact us, and customer service representatives will work hard on their behalf.

I signed up for triple play in January. My installation went smoothly and on time in February. I got my letter regarding my free TV or $200 Best Buy card this week (chose the card, due to not needing another TV and knowing they have trouble fulfilling that part).

Now, if the tv would actually WORK for more than a day without going out for no apparent reason, I’d be a happy camper.

As it stands, I’m pretty pissed with them at the moment. My tech appointment is this afternoon.

i know when i had a problem with verizon and verizon wireless i was told they couldnt do any thing for me once the problem was fixed because of previous problems and credits issued so my current problem was not something they could credit me for.

I have had FIOS since Nov. 06 and have since turned my father in law and his neighbor on to it. They both got it installed last month under the you will get a 19 inch HDTV deal. This was promised to both before, during and after the install. To date the neighbor settled for a gift certificate from Best Buy and my father in law still says they will be sending a tv, whether that the truth or not, I am not sure. I recently dropped Vonage to recieve the Freedom phone portion in order to even bundle and after two months of not seeing the bundle I was promised I moved to Verizon Voicewing VOIP which works out better, though I can’t “bundle” that service with FIOS TV and FIOS Internet. The billing system at Verizon sucks, they make it too hard to get “ONE BILL”. What’s even worse its not like I can or will go back to Comcast….ever.

@valarmorghulis: I was more amused by the fact that it’s become the absolute norm around these parts where sales reps will do whatever they need to do to make a sale, and it’s no surprise that they might be bundling multiple offers together (or at least telling the consumer that they’re doing such things) in order to make the sale.

I got a special price offer in October 07 and guess what, my bill was $35 higher than the quoted price in November – called and got the credit. In December? You guessed it, $35 too high – called and got the credit. January? February? Yep, $35 too high and the rep tells me I’ll have to call EVERY MONTH to get the adjustment. March? Yep, $35 too high but this month the rep tells me that the proper price will stick — we’ll see, but I doubt it.

Yep. still waiting for my TV. Installed in December. Had to sign up twice because they screwed up my first order. Called in February, no tv letter. Called in march, spoke to supervisor, no tv letter. Called yesterday to find out that I’m not eligible and no one even checked. 4 months after I signed up. Then the woman had the balls to tell me I could sign up for 2 years instead of 1 and be eligible.

Sorry I don’t want to sign up for 20 more months of punishment. Why on earth would I subject myself to 12 more months of abhorrent customer service? At least my bill is right.

But its true. Marketing people change promotions so often that the reps can’t keep up. The mentality is definitely “Get as many people signed up as possible, if “a handful” are pissed, who cares? We got 100k extra subscribers”.

It was the same with Cox, though. There was ALWAYS a promotion going on. I called just to see if they would lower my bill to keep me from leaving for fios and the guy got me the lowest possible promotional rate just for asking. 6 month deal and I saved 65/MONTH(!) on my bill. I never thought i’d miss Cox.

It took about 3 months for me to get the correct discounts and about 4 to get my TV.

In all honesty the Verzion Fios TV services and internet have been great so I can’t get on that. But customer service and bill has been awful.

If anyone cares to read here is my experience.

We bought a house in September and we knew Verizon was running fiber on our street, I was excited because I’m a geek and I hate Comcast. We signed up for DSL which we had at our apartments for about 3 years with no issues and never a loss of service.

After signed up we went to a one bill service with cell phone and everything. The DSL didn’t get working until about 3 weeks after we moved because they needed to add repeaters, it sucked but I stuck with them. Then the Fios group came to our door at the end of November and we signed up. Triple play with 15down 5up service, and the free TV. They told us this would be around $120, sounds good to me.

So they installed the service and everything seemed to be good until I noticed I was only getting 5down, I called up and they flicked a switch and I was up to 15mbps.

Next our bill came it was about $250, a little bit higher then the $120 I was told. I called and come to find out we weren’t getting the discount because we didn’t sign the TOS agreement. I was confused because they never told us about it, nor did they send us and email about it like they claimed they were supposed to. So they gave us a rebate and I signed the TOS. Of course the TV doesn’t come until 6-11 weeks AFTER you sign the TOS. So now a month has gone by and I have to start all over. The rep that I talked to this time, after 45 minute son hold, asked me to sign up for some like Platinum package, land line, fiber, tv and cell. Sure what the heck 1 bill right? (we had issues with one bill before.)

In the mean time my service gets dropped back down to 5mbps. This has to do with the service we signed up for, I asked for 15 but the woman who signed us up VIA phone gave us 5. (After months of this I told them screw it and stayed with 5.)

Next bill comes and it’s $200 and the cell phone bill isn’t on there. I talk to them and they aren’t giving us the land line discount plus they screwed some other things up. The land line discount is almost $20. So they tell me it is fixed and that I shouldn’t have any problems. I ask to speak to a supervisor, they claim one will call me back in 24 hrs. That never happened.

This again happens next month, my wife calls and she isn’t as calm as me. They tell here we can’t do the one bill with the cell phone because we have triple play. And they are having a hard time working with the cell phone company. Wait, what? Aren’t you both Verizon? Well apparently they are having issues with combining billing with both companies. We had this issue before about a year earlier when they tried to get us to do one bill. So warning to all, stay away from one bill.

My wife asked for a supervisor when she called and again they said 24 hrs with no response.

So late last month the next bill comes, the stupid land line discount is not there. And this is my last call. So I tell them to transfer me to a real manager or I am canceling. I got a woman who claimed to be a supervisors and she tells me that the rep that handled the case before never added the discount in, they just were discounting me my money back. They gave me a $60 rebate and I told them that my next call is me canceling if this isn’t fix. So far the March bill was fixed, but it seems like this is a common problem with them.

I did get my TV earlier this month and to my surprise it had a built in DVD player, sort of nice. The one issue I noticed is that I did get a fedex shipping number about 3 weeks before we actually got it and it took 2 days to ship. So it sat on a loading dock in Tenn for a few months.

That is my story and I just wanted to share it, hopefully it will help someone out.

Oh, I’d just love to be an external financial auditor reviewing Verizon’s 10Q SEC financial reporting, and learning the company is holding up large amounts of incorrect billings for earnings reasons. That would qualify as financial fraud, and if significant enough, put someone (CEO, CFO, Treasurer) in line for Jail under Sarbanes Oxley financial regulations.

@untruehero: Dude! The TOS thing happened to me too! I wonder how many people have gone through that. They said it should have been part of my initial setup with the technician, and I should have gotten an email about it to my verizon account (untrue).

Wow, John of AT&T Media Relations, your “denial” is quite… uncompelling and wan.

You don’t even try to dispute some of the most damning – and potentially criminal – allegations in the employee’s letter. And then you respond with the powerful retort that customers who have been waiting months for their TVs… “will receive one.”

John, your response should have been: “Under no circumstances would AT&T authorize not crediting a customer that has been mischarged through our error. While we vigorously deny the information in the alleged employee’s letter, AT&T takes seriously any information that suggests any impropriety by any of its employees and activately investigates any circumstances that suggests an employee violating our code of conduct.”

That you didn’t say this is really eye-popping and only adds credence to the letter writer’s validity.

Hey John, how about actually providing documentation that actually dispute those so-called “inaccuracies?” Also, why don’t you “publicly state” a policy about when those promised TVs should finally arrive in eligible customers’ homes?

While you’re at it, maybe also “publicly state” that all Verizon customers who have not received their TVs should not pay their bills since Verizon isn’t holding up their end of the agreement, so their customers shouldn’t either?

I too worked for verizon in NJ and was so disgusted too with all those emails and calls from customers that we were unable to help.

Let me also respond to NOW to this comment that John Bonomo, Verizon’s director of Media Relations wrote about this article:

“The employee who anonymously faxed the “mysterious” letter to your headquarters is doing his or her colleagues a disservice and dishonoring the work that they do on behalf of our customers. It’s more appropriate to cheer for thousands of our customer service representatives who are helping our customers every day.Even worse, this self-described employee’s letter contains a number of inaccuracies, and readers here should be aware them. For example, we’ve stated publicly that customers who qualified for the free TV under our recent promotion will receive one. We also acknowledged that delivering the set would take some time, and we said that as a part of the promotion.”

“This employee did not do his colleagues a disservice; he’s merely pointing out the TRUTH”. As far as dishonoring the work they do on behalf of the customers, you should even be ashamed to say that you even have such representatives as to call them “customer service representatives”, when what he is doing is informing the customers again of the TRUTH. And in regards to the TV’s and going public, why don’t you go public about all the other TRUTH’S behind the story: such as the blizts credits & promos, refusing to give customers credits, even if it was VERIZON’S error . . . WHY DON’T YOU GO PUBLIC ABOUT THAT? The truth still remains that despite your attempts to “go public”; the job is not being done right.

I was recently let go because I was still in my “probation” period and had to miss work one day for medical reasons (legal doctor’s note – reason – asthma). Then I had to miss work again due to other health issues that had me in the ER. I was told by the head of tardiness/absenteeism, that no doctor notes, or er documentations would save me. I had my final warning and if I missed one more day, I would be fired. This issue is about to go to grievance. I recently read an article here re: people getting sick due to the stress of the call center’s work conditions. After experiencing the chest pains, horrible headaches etc that I experienced while working there (which I no longer have), I would definitely agree that verizon is the cause of those issues.

All they care about is making that next sale. I’m starting to believe that part of their marketing technique is to screw up your bill, so when you call, they can “trick”, convince you to order something else. As my supervisor told me, and I quote: “if they are not going to buy anything, get them off your line, this is not a customer service position, this is a sales position”. But people have you ever looked at your bills and noticed that there is no longer is a “customer service #”; it is now a “billing #”. So where is verizon’s customer service department? Oh but wait, this is funny . . . . One of verizon’s values is CUSTOMER SERVICE & INTEGRITY. Yeah okay, what’s that number to reach this department?

I was also reprimanded for being on the phone “too long” with customers explaining their bills because they just couldn’t understand them. The problem came when they didn’t buy anything, now I’ve wasted valuable time. What verizon has failed to realize is that with sales, comes customer service. They go hand in hand. I mean the issue is so bad that employees do something called slamming’ and cramming’, all to make their numbers, look good to upper management and save their “ass” oh I mean job. They expect us to resolve the issue and offer (upgrade to triple, double play, wire maintenance, DSL & DSL broadband essentials, Direct TV, International calling plan, wireless) through questions . . . oh and all this should take place in less than 6 minutes. The system alone takes a good 2-3 minutes to get the customers info up. There’s just so much that can be said about how things are being done, that a book could be written and a class action lawsuit from both employees/ex-employees and their customers should take place real soon.

I was told not to speak out this way, cause I would be called the whistle blower too, but you know what customers and other verizon employees need to stand up for themselves and show these large corporations that without these employees and customers, there’d be no VERIZON.

I will remain anonymous for now. I still haven’t decided if to take other legal actions against verizon.

Advise to all:

Customers: beware of your bills, especially after making a call to “customer service” department (what a joke to even call it that). Review your bills carefully as you may never notice the smallest “add on”, without your permission.

Future Employees: be aware of the company that you are dealing with. The pay is great, the benefits are great, but at what cost? Is that weekly paycheck worth more than your mental well being, health, and your integrity? Do unto others, what you’d like done to you.